Various types of products or services can be purchased in different ways. For example, different products can be purchased over the internet. One type of electronic product that can be purchased is a wireless device such as a smartphone. Often, the purchaser of the device also wishes to subscribe to a service plan, which they will purchase as well.
When an electronic device is to be added to a network, various steps need to be taken to allow the device to operate in the network. For example, the network must be provisioned to recognize the device. Billing arrangements must also be made so that the user of the device is billed for the services provided by the network.
In previous systems, the various steps mentioned above occurred at various locations and used multiple devices or processes. Multiple databases had to be maintained.